Sorrow
by The-Griffin
Summary: A figure in a ruined world, with no memory of what happened to it, wanders and stumbles upon the River of All Knowledge. But is everything as it seems... or is it more...?


A lone figure woke up in its usual fashion. Bloodshot eyes snapped open, a relatively loud gasp disturbed the otherwise silent surroundings, and it immediately sat up, hiding its face with its hand and sobbing uncontrollably. The figure had been wandering around this wasteland for...

How long had he been wandering?

It didn't matter anymore. Nothing did. The figure collapsed back down to the earth, gazing up at the leaden gray skies, occasionally lit into a sickly brown by a flash of lightning.

It was dark. Always dark. The figure was trapped in an endless purgatory, where time had no meaning... and neither did existence.

Slowly hobbling to its feet, the figure breathed the air, tinged with an almost tangible sorrow. Mother Earth was crying, she was always crying these days. Something had seen to that. The figure, standing, tried to dig deep... tried to remember what it was like before this mad world came to be. The only thing it could remember were vague colors: Green, light blue... bright colors, wholesome colors now extinguished from this planet, replaced by a drab assortment of grays, browns, and ill, almost florescent, twisted parodies of the colors of... Paradise. That was the only word the figure could come up with to describe those flashes of color. The figure looked around at his surroundings, at the barren wasteland he was currently hiding in. In one direction... there was nothing. The plain stretched as far as he could see. In another, it could make out the vague outline of a wreck of a city, ruined beyond any recognition of its former existence as the center of all civilized thought. In the opposite direction from the ghost city, he could see a forest... a destroyed forest, with the little that wasn't chopped down to fuel the huge, inky-black smokestacks in the ghost city burned to the ground. The figure looked there for a moment, and immediately looked the other way. No... Something told the figure that neither the ghost city nor the ruined forest would be good to go to... they might hold **Bad Things**.

The only thing that broke the monotony of the figure's life was **Bad Things**, these days. They were huge, black, hulking masses of iron and metal, wielding red ribbons of fire at their whim, taunting him and forcing him to flee. A vague memory assaulted him of a time when it was the one who taunted these Bad Things, weaving through the shifting maze of fire ribbons they created with the utmost of ease. Those days were long gone, now. The figure looked to the last direction, towards the mountains. The figure didn't know what it would find there... but it didn't care much, either. It was someplace that didn't hold Bad Things. The figure knew that for certain. He would be _safe_ there.

As the figure hobbled across the plain, it worked at remembering who he was. It could remember easily enough that it had once been fast... and it had once flown through the air like a bird. Outside of that, there was nothing. Nothing of how it flew. Nothing of how it had been so fast. The only thing that existed to him now was the ruined world, and the pain in his legs as the wounded knees protested at their use.

Three days.

Three days of torturous trekking had brought the figure here. A part of it, long forgotten, had realized that there was a time when it could have done this in an hour. Three days or one hour, though, made no difference. The figure was here, and again, memories were bubbling to the surface. For once, it remembered a shape, rather than vague outlines and colors. The shape was that of a kindly old woman, and another, sharper, talking about this place... The figure recalled vaguely that the sharp-looking woman had been taught here. Then... there was nothing. There was no more. As the figure sighed and began to make its way to the ruin, he once more contemplated on how its life had become more and more meaningless. As he entered the ruin, another memory bubbled. This one... was of a river, a pure and mystical river that imparted knowledge to those who quested for it, those worthy of this powerful intelligence that was shared by the river. The hobbling pace imperceptibly increased, and after an hour of agony, the figure was at the final hill before the river would be in sight, the pure, clear, mystical river. The river that could give him purpose to his life once more.

Three more steps. The pain was incredible now. Three days of endless walking with little rest had weakened its knees, and every step was a little harder to make. The figure closed its eyes, wanting to see the splendor all at once.

Two more steps. Sweat was encompassing the figure now, dampening the torn, dirty, and makeshift burlap cloak that was too big in one place here, and too small in one place there.

One more step... The figure started crying, now, the tears running little rivulets down its face and leaving clear tracks in the grime that was over its entire body. As the figure's foot fell on the last step of his journey, a single tear fell from his chin and pattered on the ground.

He had made it! He had reached that paradise which would teach him how to have a purpose!

As he opened his eyes, though, what few remnants of hope shattered. The few fragments of sanity he had were torn asunder. The last barrier between him and the great beyond was torn away, and he saw, and half-accepted, half refused to accept, how insignificant he was.

The clear, pure, mystical river had been twisted, too. The shimmering water had been replaced by inky black oil, unwholesome to even breathe. The ground surrounding it was dead and cracked, as if the river, if you could call it that, had sapped every last bit of hope from the land around it and replaced it with more sorrow. With an almost blind gaze now, the figure stumbled down to the river, half hoping and half resigned as to the outcome of this encounter. The figure's throat rasped and a voice hoarse with disuse and abandonment called weakly out to the river.

"Please... Great River of Knowledge. I... need your help. I need a purpose in life. I need you... to teach me how to find... a purpose. Please... Help me..."

And the River answered by laughing. It bubbled and toiled, and after a few minutes, it calmed down, and an eerie, distorted voice emerged from the polluted and unwholesome waters.

**_"You have no purpose in life, anymore. Surely you can remember who you were, can you not? You had a purpose in life... and you failed it completely and utterly."_**

     "No... I never had a purpose in my life. It's all been... meaningless. That is why I am here. That is why I beg you. Help me find my purpose!"

     **_"If you will not believe me, then needs must I show you what you were, and what you are. Come closer, and look into my depths, mortal."_**

The figure dipped closer, and once he had looked upon its waters, the surface distorted and began to warp, showing what had happened, so long ago.

~*~*~

A brown figure in a blue jacket looked down at the figure, now clean, healthy, and content. As they lay in each other's embrace, the present figure, a mere onlooker, marveled at the color. There was brown, yes... but it was a wholesome, rich, deep, dark brown, speaking of health and goodwill towards all who would step upon it. Another figure burst in, a large grey figure in overalls, screaming frantically. The two in bed looked at each other in shock and dashed outside, not bothering with anything save one last kiss, nothing more than a mere peck on the cheek. Finally, they dashed outside...

And the figure, now the onlooker, screamed.

The wholesome scene was twisted, almost more desolate in its anticipated destruction than the real thing. Bodies lay everywhere, neat circles burned through their chests where the heart would be. Man, woman, child, nothing mattered. Everybody was killed. And standing over every corpse... there was two of the Bad Things. The figure of the past, seeing the carnage, gave an unearthly scream and dove towards the Bad Things, spinning like a madman and cleaving through three in the space of a second. As he stopped spinning, he leaped towards another and removed its head with another quick spin. Landing in a crouch, the figure of the past started spinning again, cleaving through even more. Finally, a Bad Thing took careful aim... and fired. The figure of the past, not seeing it, was running towards another, and was about to leap once again, when both knees were struck through with fire ribbons. The figure, surprised, fell to the ground. The last thing the figure of the past heard was the laughing of some sort of... devil before he passed out. When he reawakened, he was tied to a tree. And as he was forced to watch, a devil in red and black killed all of the figure of the past's friends and allies, regardless of gender... even doing disgusting deeds to some of them, before they too had their heads lanced with a fire ribbon. The last to die was a young fox child with two tails, and the devil in red and black spared him no mercy either. As the last one died, the bound figure thrashed and cursed vehemently as he swore to kill the figure. The red and black devil merely laughed and chopped down the tree the figure was bound to, before forcing him to follow as he systematically destroyed the forest he was in. Finally, after everything had been torched, the figure was unbound, dragged into a craft and dropped into the wasteland with a burlap cloak over his body to mask his shame.

~*~*~

The onlooker, now once again a wandering figure, stumbled back, lost his balance, and fell over as everything flooded him. The resistance against the devil, the final assault against him, the defeat, the retaliation... and the massacre assaulted his mind. He stood up, looked down at his knees, and collapsed face first onto the ground, sobbing at the truthfulness of the river's lesson. He did have a purpose in life, once. He'd failed. The inky black river laughed and bubbled at the sorrow of the figure, and crooned to it once more.

**_"So now you see what you were. You were once one of a group of heroes, who could do amazing things with almost nothing. But you all failed, and you are the last remnant. Now stop sobbing and look into me once more, for the vision of what you are now."_**

The figure, unable to stop sobbing, still complied and looked into the river after an agonizing process of regaining its feet. What stared back at him would haunt him to the end of his days.

Hollow green eyes stared back, bloodshot and puffy around the edges, from either the sobbing or some disease. Through the sweat and grime the figure made out matted fur, a royal blue in color. The burlap cloak's hood could not hide the gravity-defying quills, all of them cracked in one place or another, and many broken off completely. The figure's back was hunched from years of hobbling, and the body that showed through the holes in the cloak was an emaciated wreck, bony ribs easily visible.

The worst part was easily the legs. They were still bloody from the wound that had crippled him, and the knees were gory wrecks that would not last another day. Infections could be seen near the sides of the kneecaps, sickly yellow pustules that throbbed with every movement. The worst part wasn't the knees, though. Above them... the legs were ironically perfect, untouched by the wear and tear that years of wandering had brought him. No, **nothing** was worse than seeing those perfect legs... then staring at the sickly yellow joints that promised to be his undoing.

The river spoke with an almost smug tone now. **_"So you see what you are now. You have legs that are perfect... knees that will kill you. You're barely alive now, unfit even to be made a lowly worker robot. You were once Sonic the Hedgehog... but now, you are just a pathetic wanderer, the final remnant of the Mobian race, condemned to a purgatory of suffering because you resisted inevitability incarnate. You resisted Doctor Ivo Robotnik."_**

And deep down inside, the figure... no, Sonic... knew that the river was right.

The End

Author's Note:

...Whoa. This was a **dark** little fic, no? Well, anyway, I'd just like to let you know that the inspiration for this fic came from the Pink Floyd song "Sorrow," from their album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason." It's one of their more underrated songs, and it has some greats, such as "Learning to Fly," the inspiration for another of my fics. Now, for one final thing, that is the bane of all lawyers everywhere.

Disclaimer: Sonic the Hedgehog is copyrighted to Sega. The inspiration for this fic, "Sorrow," is copyrighted to the band Pink Floyd. Any resemblance of this fiction to any other is purely coincidental, as is any resemblance of this fiction to any actual event. The concept for this fiction is copyrighted to the author, The_Griffin. All rights reserved.


End file.
